KYQ4: London Post Covid

St Paul's from the Millenium Bridge


City of London from the South Bank

It is 28 months since we last visited London where our daughters and grandchildren live. We followed the Covid rules and like many have been reluctant to travel by train or plane since the start of the pandemic. It was a big birthday for two of the family so we booked train tickets to London and a series of events to celebrate. As the time approached we became increasingly concerned, the rate of infections in Scotland had reached its highest ever level, one in eleven Scots had COVID including our son who had to delay his trip from Glasgow until he had tested negative for two days.

The trip on the nationalised LNER service was a complete success in comparison with many previous journeys on the appalling Virgin Trains, their franchise was terminated before the pandemic. The new Azuma trains were both comfortable and kept to time. London was enjoying a spring heatwave and it was uplifting on arrival to spend a couple of hours in the early evening soaking up the atmosphere as the streets were thronged with people socialising and shopping after work.

We had booked to go to the theatre and walked from Covent Garden along the embankments to the Globe Theatre on the South Bank. It was a bit of a crush on the benches but most of the audience were wearing masks and it was the first live event we had attended since 2019. The walk back to the hotel in Covent Garden was over the Millenium Bridge and we passed dozens of bars where people had cascaded outside to drink and enjoy the balmy evening. Rickshaws were cruising along the Strand with inebriated girls singing along to the amplified music. We had a late meal at Mildreds and it was midnight before we made it back to the hotel.

The next day was a big one and after breakfast in a nearby cafe, we sauntered through the streets of London to the British Museum. The queue for entry was over 30 minutes so we abandoned that idea and enjoyed walking the streets, looking at some shops, having a coffee and then 30 minutes at the National Gallery. We had booked tickets for Swan Lake at the Opera House so met our daughter there for lunch and settled down to a 3-hour performance, I only fell asleep once. Then an Uber back to our daughter's to share a birthday cake with the grandchildren.

Saturday was a chance for a lazy walk around Brockwell Park, on the way back we happened upon a vast motorbike rally where Hell's Angels and fellow hoards of bearded, tattooed motorcyclists revved their Harley Davidsons and other heavy metal bikes through red traffic lights, ignoring the Met Police outriders who were attempting but totally failing to supervise the ride. The convoy of motorbikes held up the traffic and pedestrians for about 15 minutes during which several thousand motorbikes were giving two fingers to the fuel crisis and the local population. The horns were blaring and cars inching out but were halted by a red-haired biker chick in her fifties who stood her ground and prevented anyone from crossing the convoy by hurling offensive language at them. What was needed was Cerys Mathews to assuage the road rage with some emollient advice like "you could be taking it easy on yourselves". As an act of collective crime, it was an illustration of why mob rule, whether by bikers or oligarchs, is part of the underlying culture in the Smoke. I could find no reporting of the event in the press or media the next day. Perhaps the London Fourth Estate are no more competent than the Met Police in coping with rampant self-indulgence.

We took the tube to Oxford Circus to reach the Rovi restaurant in Fitzrovia for a late lunch. The whole family was together for the first time in five or six years and everyone seemed to enjoy the occasion. It was repeated the next day when we visited Richmond and had lunch with our daughters and grandchildren after a walk along the banks of the Thames and before a visit to Richmond Park, the largest park in London.

The weather had stayed sunny and warm for the whole weekend and extended to the following day when I took an opportunity to charge around Brixton to get a feel of what had changed during the past couple of years. New flats, new offices, new businesses, new street art and a new primary school confirmed that Brixton is still attracting investment and people. Gentrification was apparent with the railway arches undergoing the switch from starter businesses to trendy eateries. The journey home on the train later in the day was relaxing. It was what we needed after four days with more social activities with other people than we had managed in pretty well the entire two years of COVID.